Back in the day Japanese developers didn't have the budget or the control to make perfect Japanese-to-English translations... although probably no one really cared. They had to translate and export their games to the West as fast as possible.

So they can't be blamed for this reallybut the results are too hilarious. We collected some of them below.

What amazes me is that even at that point in time there were localizing teams to convert the game for an English audience. Also consider that most NES games had maybe 1-2 paragraphs of text per game it would take 1 native peaker an hour or less to properly get rid of any engrish.

It gets even funnier when Japanese lawyers write this stuff. Back when I worked at a factory automation company that sold Japanese products, the manuals for these products used to have a some legalese in them “In this manual we have tried describe all possible configuration. Any other configuration not in the manual should be considered impossible.”

I had a couple of jobs where I had to interact with Japanese, with comical results. The first one involved a consignment of crated goods, being shipped from Tokyo, to Las Vegas. All the crates were clearly marked, in large stencil letters “Ras Begas”. The other involved some young teenage Japanese girls, wearing the cutest pink and white tops, with teddy bears and unicorns, and the English words “Fvck you” (you can imagine the actual spelling), emblazoned across their chests. It was obvious they had no idea what the words meant.

Back around 2000, we got ‘hired’ to help an R&D team from a Japanese tire mfgr better understand the needs of off-road vehicles. Most of the team spoke exactly two words of English...”Crazy Horse”...as in the Strip club. (CH2 was still open then).

We had them out in the desert for three days. Well, most of them. Because after the first night at CH2, one of them disappeared for the duration. The dancer that he left with, and he, were found a week later in one hell of a ...situation ;)

My frat mate from college is the English teacher for a “gakuen” (high school) in Hokkaido. He sticks out because he’s the only white dude there so he’s popular. He told me when he replaced the other Engrish’ teacher, he almost died laughing the week before as he was reviewing the school syllabus for the upcoming school year and almost every sentence was spelled wrong.

21
posted on 02/01/2013 10:56:15 PM PST
by max americana
(Make the world a better place by punching a liberal in the face)

My best friend had an early Honda motorcycle way back in the day that required (too) frequent clutch adjustments. We figured out how to do it no thanks to the manual which advised the user, at one point to “tickle the nut smilingly”

26
posted on 02/02/2013 4:52:13 AM PST
by muir_redwoods
(Don't fire until you see the blue of their helmets)

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